


we drift and we call it dreaming

by Anna_banana



Category: Formula 1 RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Tattoo Parlor, Dream World, Fantasy, Formula 1 drivers - Freeform, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Magical Realism, Memory Loss, Piercings, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-05-25
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:00:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24369250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anna_banana/pseuds/Anna_banana
Summary: Sometimes Kevin gives himself agonising headaches, trying to remember some mundane fact about his life, or when he tries to picture something from the made up world in his mind. Most of the time, he finds it easier just to ignore these things, it’s certainly less painful, despite the way it makes his chest clench, certain he should be trying harder to remember.Why some fantasy world could possibly be so important, Kevin doesn’t know. Why Kevin keeps slipping up and calling his delusions memories, well no surprise, he doesn’t know that either.
Relationships: Nico Hulkenberg/Kevin Magnussen
Comments: 10
Kudos: 27





	we drift and we call it dreaming

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Quagswagging](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quagswagging/gifts).



> Title from Call it dreaming- Iron & Wine.
> 
> This was for a prompt for a Kevin tattoo shop AU and I kind of went sideways on it.

Kevin run’s his own tattoo shop in California, near Huntington Beach. The shop is called Angel’s wings- inspired by his favourite of his own tattoos. He used to be based in Denmark, the country where he grew up. His work slowly became more well known through social media and conventions and eventually he decided to move shop. Most of his employees joined him from his old place. Only one is an exception.

When Nico came in with a CV and tales of his past experience, Kevin didn’t need any new employees, he really didn’t. When the blond man with the eyebrow piercing and the cheeky smirk asks him if he’s hired however, something makes him say yes, despite all logic telling him otherwise.

The same gut feeling that made him feel like something was missing when he left Denmark, is the same gut feeling that makes him decide to take a chance on this guy. 

Piercings are always consistent, easy money is the reason he gives his other employees, despite having never had any desire to employ a piercer before.

Kevin has often made the decisions in his life based on gut decisions. The uneasy feelings that he has however seem to be becoming more and more regular.

He upgraded to a ridiculously fast road car, burning a large chunk of his savings in the process. It was a reckless decision. He barely ever needs to drive- the tattoo shop is a walkable distance from his apartment and running your own business rarely leaves room for days off. To make up for it, Kevin spends a lot of his nights out on long fast drives. He ignores the very real risk of speeding tickets, a long driving ban even, as he plants his foot on the accelerator. Something in the back of his mind still tells him he isn’t going fast enough. Oddly, he never receives a single ticket, not even a warning. 

Sometimes, when he goes out to drive he tries to put an imaginary helmet on. He has no idea why, he has never owned a motorbike after all.

Tattoo shops rarely open particularly early, unless it’s for a specific client. Normally, that means that Kevin can spend his mornings on the beach. Huntington beach is brilliant for surfing and he spends a large chunk of his time on the waves.

Sometimes while surfing, he gets the sense that he’s just a little bit too close to the water. When those thoughts enter his head, he looks out to the ocean, staring at the boats longingly. Kevin has no idea why he does that, he doesn’t know the first thing about sailing. Sometimes the uneasy feeling gets too strong and he has to take a few weeks off from surfing.

When Kevin was younger it was only strange feelings. Now, on top of that, he also has to deal with these weird, incoherent dreams he keeps having.

Kevin’s favourite dreams are the ones where he’s driving faster than he’s ever gone before. The ones he hates the most are the ones where he seems to be talking to some sort of press, lights flashing and microphones pushed too close to his face. 

And then there’s the other dream.

The one that involves Nico. A Nico with no eyebrow piercing. Not even the studs in his ear or the piercing on his tongue that he often makes lewd jokes about. That’s the dream that confuses him the most. 

Nico, the real one, not the dream one, often likes to ask him questions. Some of them are normal- ‘what’s the inspiration behind your tattoo?’ It’s a normal question, one he’s asked a lot even, but Kevin always hates to try and answer it. To Nico he says the truth, ‘they do have a meaning, but I’m not quite sure what it is, it’s like the inspiration is locked in my head you know?’

To others he always just makes some bullshit up.

Other questions are considerably more random. Asking him about formula one. About drivers he’s never heard of. Sure he probably watched some races when he was younger but they live in the US. Now if he has to watch anything, he watches NASCAR like everyone else.

Occasionally, the questions are downright terrifying and those always end up in him and Nico arguing. Nico asks him about a girlfriend in Denmark. Kevin knows that she isn’t real, but then why can he picture how she looks, imagine her name, describe the pet dog they have together. 

Normally Nico is very persistent with his questioning. There’s one question he asked however that he never asked again.

‘What do you think people imagine when they’re in comas?’

When Nico said this, Kevin grew dizzy, his breath sped up and he thought he was about to pass out. 

It was a weird sensation actually, Kevin doesn’t normally get ill, can’t remember having ever been ill actually, even when he tries to think really hard about it. 

Kevin doesn’t want to imagine what he would see if he was in a coma. His own life is freaky enough.

Nico only asked that question once. But ever since he did, Kevin started hearing heart monitor sounds when he’s in the place that’s somewhere between wakefulness and sleep. Kevin’s not an expert, but he’s pretty sure it sounds slower than it should be.

Kevin remembers the first time he made a pass at Nico, an actual pass that is, not just the casual flirty bickering that they normally partake in. Nico seemed more than willing, but nevertheless surprised and that in itself shocked Kevin, so much so that he almost took back his comment.

He never told Nico, but the German’s reaction has plagued him every day since. His imagination has always been vivid but the images in his mind seem to be becoming ever clearer. In his mind he can picture a world where they actually hate each other or at least become experts at pretending to. In this world they are rivals even, although at what, Kevin can’t quite picture. He has a feeling that they aren’t rival body artists. The images are blurry but the feelings seem more real than his own. Kevin wonders if he is tapping into some kind of parallel universe. He has a funny feeling that it’s not the case, that it’s something else. Something more, maybe. 

When Kevin drifts off to sleep, he hears the sounds of the heart monitor. It must be getting imperceptibly louder every night. It took Kevin a couple of weeks to notice the change in volume. 

Sometimes Kevin gives himself agonising headaches, trying to remember some mundane fact about his life, or when he tries to picture something from the made up world in his mind. Most of the time, he finds it easier just to ignore these things, it’s certainly less painful, despite the way it makes his chest clench, certain he should be trying harder to remember. 

Why some fantasy world could possibly be so important, Kevin doesn’t know. Why Kevin keeps slipping up and calling his delusions memories, well no surprise, he doesn’t know that either. 

On a good day, Kevin spends his time with Nico. They always spend their breaks at work together. After a while, they spend most nights together too. They’re both quite fit and their diets are reasonable but whenever they have dinner together, Kevin is certain that they’re even healthier, have far more conditioned bodies in the other world. He also has a weird thought about them having stronger neck muscles? No matter how hard he tries to think about it, Kevin has no idea what exercises you would use to train your neck, or why you would even want to do it in the first place. 

Sometimes, Kevin says snippets of his thoughts out loud. He always judges those snippets carefully, never wanting to sound too insane. Especially when the only person he ever has any urge to share them with is Nico. 

He decides to voice his curiosity about training neck muscles. 

When Nico suggests googling it, Kevin brushes the idea off. If he remembers correctly, he made a joke about it helping with choking kinks, in an attempt to distract the German. 

Sometimes, Kevin thinks he should google the names of those apparent F1 drivers he has never heard of, or search up his Danish girlfriend and see if she could be real. Whenever Kevin thinks about googling something, he rarely has the courage to do it. 

He’s not sure what would be worse. Finding out that his imagination is real, or finding out that it’s not. 

One day, Nico decides to remove the barbells from his nipples, claiming that they had caught on his shirt and he was beginning to find them irritating. Only a few days later, Kevin realises he has completely forgotten what his chest looked like with the piercings in. Not in the sense that he had just quickly gotten used to it but in the sense that he literally couldn’t remember it at all. Even just trying to imagine what it would look like, Kevin draws a complete blank. 

When Kevin realises how completely that memory is gone, he goes searching for some others. His childhood memories, all of his memories from Denmark are patchy, which isn’t unusual. The fact he can’t remember what he had for breakfast this morning, or a single part of the massive chest piece he designed last week, that’s a lot more worrying. 

Kevin thinks over the last couple of months and realises he could probably tell you more about his made up life than about his real one. 

When Kevin wakes up, it’s often to the sound of Nico crashing around in the kitchen, trying to make something edible. Whenever that happens, Kevin has to bite his tongue to prevent Danish spilling from his lips, telling his younger brother off for making a racket. 

When Kevin wakes up, the first thing he does is have a shower. A shower and a cry.

Kevin doesn’t have a younger brother, yet Kevin knows his name and can barely stop himself from yelling at him every morning. Kevin doesn’t have a younger brother. His name is Luca. 

Nico’s back at it with the questions. Kevin wonders what it would take for him to tell the other man to shut up.

‘What’s the most important thing one of us has ever said to the other?’ He asks.

Kevin takes a while to think about it, more in the mood to humour Nico than normal. A lot of answers flick through his head while he ponders it. ‘I love you.’ ‘You’re hired.’ Instead a completely different answer leaves his mouth.

‘Suck my balls,’ he says.

Kevin’s mind races when the statement leaves his mouth. He doesn’t even remember thinking it, never mind planning on saying it. Besides the obvious he doesn’t even know what that means besides the obvious and he’s pretty sure neither of them have ever said those exact words. 

Before he can take it back Nico laughs. Kevin laughs along, although he can’t help but wonder how Nico and him can have an inside joke when he doesn’t even remember being a part of it. 

When Kevin has consecutive days off, he always uses them to go on a holiday. Monaco, Baku, Sydney and more. His time off is used to travel all over the world. The flights are long and the days spent actually on holiday feel even longer. 

One time when he and Nico are in bed together, Kevin admits that he doesn’t even like going away that much, he just sometimes gets this feeling that he’s been stuck in the same place for too long. 

Nico says he knows that feeling all too well, although Kevin suspects that they aren’t talking about the same thing. If Kevin had to guess, he would say that Nico is stuck in the wrong parallel universe. When he’s feeling particularly morose, Kevin thinks that Nico probably just feels stuck with him. 

When Kevin floats between consciousness and sleep, he hears a heart monitor beeping, and wonders if perhaps he’s stuck in entirely the wrong place too.

Whenever Kevin and Nico have sex, it feels as though Kevin has to learn Nico’s body all over again. Every time they are together, he takes his time, cataloguing every little reaction. The next day, the details always slip through his fingers. At first he figured maybe it was just the passion between them, a figment of his imagination, a deep connection causing every moment to feel brand new. 

When Kevin flicks through his memories, something seems off about that assessment. He knows he’s slept with men before but whenever he’s with Nico, it feels not only like he’s sleeping with Nico for the first time, but the whole sensation of touching a man seems brand new. 

Kevin has never slept with a woman, yet when he tries to imagine it, he can catalogue every little sensation. Kevin has never slept with a woman, he came out to his family when he was a teenager. 

He knows for certain that conversation happened. He can’t remember a single word of it. 

‘Wake up,’ a voice in his head says. The voice is muffled but it sounds a lot like his mum. 

Kevin tries to concentrate, his brows furrow. No matter how hard he tries, he can’t seem to hear it again. ‘Wake up?’ He thinks to himself curiously, but I’m already wide awake. 

Kevin and Nico have almost all of their meals together. When Kevin eats, it’s half hearted at most. Even the hottest curries seem tasteless at the moment. If that wasn’t bad enough, whenever he eats, there’s a strange crawling sensation through his veins. The cause of which he can’t even begin to guess at. 

Almost all the time now, Kevin’s throat feels dry, his voice raspy. No matter how much water he drinks it doesn’t seem to help. His throat still feels dry. 

He keeps thinking to himself that he should really book a Doctor’s appointment. He keeps thinking about it, but never gets around to the task. 

Kevin can picture the doctors clearly, the dentists too. Although when he tries to recall going, as far as he can remember, he’s never been. 

‘Wake up,’ becomes a statement he can hear more clearly, with several voices now as a part of the encouragement.

He feels less confused by being asked to wake up than he used to be. Now, Kevin only wonders how on Earth he’s supposed to wake himself up when he has no idea why he’s sleeping. 

‘Do you ever feel like you are sleepwalking through life?’ He asks Nico.

The tables have turned, Kevin is the one who asks the weird questions now.

He asks the question after having received a septum piercing, he thought the pain would maybe wake him up. Instead he felt absolutely nothing. Not to mention the piercing doesn’t suit him. It was a pretty dumb idea now he thinks about it. 

‘Maybe not sleepwalking,’ Nico answers when he has finished with the disinfectant. ‘Dreaming maybe?’

‘Hallucinating?’ Kevin suggests back.

It feels closer to the truth somehow.

‘What’s the difference?’ 

Nico’s comment is a joke but neither of them laugh. Instead they simply stare into each other’s eyes. Kevin looks at Nico’s eyebrow piercing. He doesn’t know how, but he knows if he touched the piercing, he would simply feel smooth skin and coarse hairs. 

Kevin wonders what would happen if he crashed his car. Would he feel pain? Would he wake up? Die?

Kevin is too afraid to find out. 

When he finally, finally tries to google some answers, he has no luck. Apparently the internet in his apartment is having issues. He tries his data, apparently he’s used it all for the month. 

So he has to figure this out on his own then.

Until he remembers that he’s not on his own. 

The next time Kevin sees Nico, he tries to explain everything. There’s no order to his thoughts, to the chain of events. His memories are scrambled and filled with nonsensical ideas. He mentions how the heart monitor beeps just before he falls asleep several times. That bit seems important for some reason. 

Nico just sits and listens. He doesn’t look at all shocked for someone who is listening to the ramblings of a crazy person. 

If Kevin is being honest with himself, he knows it’s because he’s not crazy and that Nico is almost definitely feeling a lot of the same things. He knows that what he’s saying isn’t crazy because it’s their real lives that are the crazy part, it’s their real lives that are a dream.

When Nico speaks, their stories are almost identical. He hears crying sometimes that sounds like his parents, he hears his girlfriend calling him a ‘fucking areshole.’

Nico has never had a girlfriend either, Kevin thinks, despite knowing that he’s telling the truth.

Nico tells him that he knew he had to work for Kevin, that something was missing until he met him. That things are still blurry but that they’re beginning to make sense now. It sounds corny, but Kevin knows that it’s true because Kevin had to hire him. Kevin had to hire him, despite having never needed a piercer before. 

Things have been beginning to make more sense but still not enough, Nico says and at that point Kevin thinks he has it. 

There’s a moment where he considers keeping it to himself. Nico would never forgive him and their lives aren’t even real. Kevin knows he can’t keep it to himself, as much as a part of him wants to. 

He says a silent goodbye.  
A goodbye to his tattoo shop, to the waves of California, to his road car. He feels the urge to say goodbye to Nico although that doesn’t make sense. 

Except it does, because they both have girlfriends and dogs and their own lives in the other world. In the other world he knows they hate each other, or at least both do a stellar job at pretending. Kevin’s head is no longer sore but his heart aches. He knows that he could never hate Nico.

“Formula one drivers,” he says. “A crash.”

His voice is a whisper, barely audible.

Nico’s eyes snap to his. His piercing blue eyes clear and he remembers as much as Kevin now.

Kevin was already awake. 

Kevin wakes up.

{}

He hears the beeping of the heart monitor. He thinks that it’s going slightly faster than normal. Kevin’s eyes flutter open, taking a couple of minutes to adjust to the bright lights.

His throat feels dry. If he tries to move his hands he can feel something in his wrists. 

Now he understands why. 

“Kevin, are you awake?” a voice asks.

It could be his mother, or it could be someone else. His ears are ringing. 

Kevin’s throat is dry so he nods in response. 

‘I’m finally awake,’ Kevin thinks. 

Maybe it hasn’t been long but Kevin has a feeling he’s been sleeping for a while now.

‘Nico,’ he tries to say.

His voice cracks and the word is illegible. ‘God, my throat really is dry, he thinks to himself.’ He wonders exactly how long it’s been. 

‘What was that?’ the voice asks.

Kevin doesn’t answer. He can’t speak yet and the Doctor’s are bound to be here soon anyway. Kevin closes his eyes and he finds it in himself to be grateful that he can’t talk. If he tried to say what he wanted to, nobody would understand anyway.

Nico means nothing to me in this life, Kevin tells himself. He has a feeling it’s something he’ll need to repeat to himself a lot to remember.

{}

In another room, in another hospital, another pair of blue eyes open. In another country, another voice also tries and fails, to say the name that it desperately wants to.

‘Kevin,’ he attempts to say. 

His voice cracks and the name is inaudible.

The heart monitor speeds up.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! Kudos, thoughts, comments always appreciated!
> 
> Find me on tumblr- bottasvaltteri


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